Ode on a G-String

Sex Industry

Written and directed by Bina Sharif
Theatre for the New City
Non-union production (closes Oct. 26)
Review by John Chatterton

These two one-acts (A Decent Job and Closets Full of
Juicy Plums) show a lot of courage for a woman author/director,
insofar as they use extremely explicit sexual language and situations,
although they're limited dramatically.

The show has its funny moments, though, and it is refreshing to
see porn treated so lightheartedly. A Decent Job finds
a rather endearing, horny banker (Kevin Mitchell Martin)
who has hired three bored dancers (AmyMinty, Jes
See Sutherland, and Michelle Wright) to tantalize him
with their nipples, erect and promising, either clothed in silk
or bare for his delectation. Most of the first part of this play
is a paean by the banker to said nipples, in which he separately
lists and discards other parts of the female anatomy as suitable
objects for his lust. No, nipples he must have, and nipples he
will pay for, all to the end of getting an erection and running
off to the men's room to masturbate. This long chanting invocation
of Aphrodite repeats itself several times, with the women swarming
over him prior to his getting the necessary erection and running
off ("The only exercise I get is when I run to the bathroom
to masturbate"). The monolog takes on a minimalist air à
la Phillip Glass, from time to time adding a new ingredient, like
his pleasure in tasting his own cum. The play ends on a silly
melodramatic note: the banker's wife invades his fantasy world
with a gun, soon followed by two cops, who try to sort out who
is doing what to whom.

Martin was especially good as the crazed banker, although his
hair was too long and was slicked back in a D.A. The dancers wriggled
seductively and got into a convincing catfight. Helene Johnson
was convincing as the psychotically angry wife. David Aronson
and Standing Bear had few opportunities as the two cops.

In Closets Full of Juicy Plums, Sharif passes from the
world of masturbation to that of incest, while keeping her comic
perspective. She posits a stepfather (Jerry Jaffe), his
stepdaughter (Amy Minty, on book as a last-minute replacement),
and a worried principal (Bina Sharif). In the first scene, man
and girl rhapsodize over the power of his old, wise, rich cock
and its attraction to her young, wet pussy, in the repetitive
vein reserved for nipples in the first piece. In the second scene,
the girl confesses to her principal that she is having sex with
her stepfather; the principal confesses that she would give her
life to have again such sexual experiences as the girl is enjoying.
(The girl also describes the wonderful laxative powers of her
stepfather's cock, as her continual trips to the girls' room have
brought her to the principal's attention.) The principal has a
wonderful monolog testifying to her desire for the stepfather's
attentions. The last two scenes sink again into melodrama.

None of the actors showed any intensity of involvement with the
others, but went through their monologs by rote. And surely an
actress who had been hired long enough to get her name in the
program could learn her one monolog, rather than have it played
over the sound system.

Apart from their dramatic and theatrical limitations, these pieces
explored the language of pornography in a challenging way. This
is a poetry of primitive magic as seen by children, which imputes
to the sexual organs of adults magical properties, even properties
the opposite of those commonly accepted by medical science (for
instance, that men peak sexually at age 17, women at 35. Also,
from what primitive symbolic source comes the laxative power of
the experienced penis?). (Lighting Designer, Stephen Petrilli.)